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The Antec P280 is a no-nonsense giant

Okay, take the headline with a pinch of salt. For one thing, I don't actually own a gun. But I just finished building my first gaming rig in five years, and there's something about putting all the pieces together that must feel a little bit like owning a gun.

I'll do my best to explain.

I don't come to this conclusion (supposition?) simply because there's a feeling of power that comes with putting together a super-fast gaming PC. There's also a sort of simple elegance to it that's at once totally geeky and actually quite beautiful.

In fact, there's not much to building your own computer. You're not really building anything at all - the motherboard and GPU and processor and RAM and all the rest come fully manufactured.

More accurately, you're simply piecing it together. Lovingly, with care, and after much research and drooling over parts you likely can't afford.

How is this like owning a gun?

Again, I can't really say anything for certain. I can only imagine. I can do my best to guess what a gun owner must feel when they take apart and piece back together a rifle, or head out to the shooting range.

Here's the thing about guns: in an age of planned obsolescence, they're built to last.

What else can you buy that's going to work as well in thirty or forty years as it does today? Cars start dying the moment you drive them; most everything else we just assume is going to break before making its final pilgrimage to junk-Mecca.